The Lonely Gunman
by Ezekiel Harbinger
Summary: A man named Richard Starkey looks back on his life.


Mr. Richard Starkey was the only person in attendance at the wake. No one but him had seemed to care about William's death ("William was the youngest of us," Richard thought). But that was probably because, besides Richard, there was no one left to care.   
  
Everyone Richard had ever cared about, everyone he had ever gotten to know, had died a long, long time ago. For example, Richard used to hang out with a guy named Jimmy. Richard always thought of him as an annoyance, but when he stepped in front of the bullet that was meant for him in the ending moments of the Romeo-61 scandal, Richard knew he had lost a true friend.  
  
John. Hmph. Now there was a story behind that. John had always wanted the full, unabridged truth, no matter what it cost. It ended up costing him his life. When John finally discovered what Romeo-61 really was, Morris was there again, and John discovered that the sword was forever mightier than the pen.  
  
Then there was that former cop who found him an annoyance. He actually asked Richard if he was wearing pants once! The nerve of that man! Well, Richard thought, he was as good a G-man as he was a cop, and, deep down, the New-York-cop-turned-G-man was a good person. That was, at least, until he finally snapped...and Monica was in his line of fire. And seconds later, the gun was pointed to his own head.  
  
Poor Monica. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr. Bad Attitude G-man just couldn't handle being son-less anymore. Richard couldn't blame him anymore, really. William was like a son to him. He felt like killing the cop who told him of his passing, but he refrained.  
  
But back to Morris. After Morris silenced John and Jimmy, Melvin was full of rage, so much so, that he did something Richard never, ever thought him capable of. Melvin always had a gun on him, it turned out. Just in case the occasion ever arose in which he might need it. And Melvin shot Morris four times in the head.  
  
Melvin died in prison, a shell of the man he once was. Richard and his friends went and visited him every Thursday and Saturday. One Saturday, he wasn't there. As it turns out, the warden said Melvin had died of a sudden heart attack, which the coroner said was most likely brought on by grief. But Melvin died with a smile on his face, because Romeo-61 had finally been made public. So had the truths that Fox and Dana had sought for so long (And Richard helped. He was a celebrity. All those books, movies, television specials-all the money and all the women [finally] in all the world-it never did anything for him).  
  
Fox and Dana. This was their son's funeral. Richard cried at the thought of them. His hair was still as blonde and curly as it was when he met them, and he didn't look a day over sixty. His eye-sight was as poor as ever, too. Still, the pain of losing Fox and Dana to a "legally dead" declaration was almost too much to bear after knowing them for so long.  
  
After Fox and all the rest died, Richard began to warm up to the few friends he had left. On Sundays he always went to church with Walter, who had also become a devout Christian after all the carnage and death brought about by a common enemy. But one day, Walter didn't answer the door when Richard came to pick him up for church. Instead, his wife did. Walter's wife, who died shortly thereafter, said that the dreams had recently started again, and they were more potent than ever. Richard knew what dreams she was talking about. There was nothing the psychiatrists could do, apparently, even with such significant advances in medicine in the last fifteen years. There were no words Richard could find to express his sympathies.   
  
Richard had never actually met Gibson, but was still crushed when he heard about what a relocated Detective Miles found in the desert. He was another key piece in what Richard had come to call The Puzzle, the never-ending quest that Fox and Dana never finished...  
  
And then there was that Steven Hawking lookalike, Kimmy. There was no reason why Kimmy died, Richard thought. The bastard just didn't wake up one morning. Richard had always suspected foul play on Spender's part, because Kimmy was one of the last few on Richard's side, trying to piece together The Truth about The Puzzle.   
  
What HAD happened to Spender after he returned from seeming death? He set everything in Romeo-61 into motion. It was his fault that all those decent men died. And where had he gone? Drifted into obscurity. Richard sometimes awoke from a nightmare that Fox and Dana were still out there, hounding Spender in the woods for all eternity...  
  
Alvin put a bullet through his head when his wife died. Richard, by this time, had stopped caring about the FBI in any way, shape, or form. In the old days, he would have jumped for joy. Another conspirator down. But Richard could have been an Ecstasy burnout and not have cared less.  
  
Suzanne. That name brought back memories to Richard. It's all her fault that he was involved in all this. That bitch deserved what she got when her torso was found floating in the Hudson River.  
  
Marita was found dead at the New Jersey Turnpike. Her body was way past the point of identification, of course, but Richard knew it was her. He didn't need Dana's skills as a doctor to know what the Syndicate had done. How it was still working somehow, even after its exposure. It's like the public cared less than Richard.  
  
Fox and Dana once helped a man named Frank get his life back together. Richard had met him briefly before he died of Alzheimer's the day after Marita was found at the Turnpike.  
  
Yves was the last one to die. She was always so careful, but apparently the Russians were more careful. They mailed her back to Richard, piece by piece by piece, until the only thing left were here eyes. Even in death, they were still beautiful.  
  
That's when Richard Starkey stopped believing in God.  
  
It was also at this point that he changed his name to Richard Starkey (his hero's name) to hide his identity from those who would come looking for him. He dropped off the face of the Earth and went into hiding with William. He still had connections, and the illegal plastic surgery helped on more than one occasion (although it killed him to deface Fox and Dana's final gift to the world). Throughout all this, he had still been publishing the paper. Its title had changed (the assassins mentioned in the title had lost three of their rank, leaving a lonely gunman), but everything else had remained the same. It killed Richard to stop publishing the paper, but it had to be done.   
  
And now William. The report says he died of a drug overdose. Cocaine and amphetamines. Not William's style. After Fox and Dana vanished, Richard had legally adopted William. He wasn't the kind of guy to get involved in drugs. Unless…  
  
But of course! It all hit him instantly!  
  
"Father," he said to the priest conducting the ceremony. "Thank you for doing this for me. He was all I had left. I-I have to go now."  
  
"I know, my son," Father Boulle said. "I once lost a relative who was very important to me, as well."  
  
"You have my deepest sympathies," Richard said.  
  
"They never found the killer."  
  
"May I ask how he died?"  
  
"A car explosion. Back in 1998. But it's ancient history now."  
  
"Goodbye, Father."  
  
"Goodbye, my son."  
  
And Richard "Ringo" Langly, wearing his faded tuxedo T-shirt and pulling his long, blonde hair behind his head, walked out of the church into oncoming traffic.  
  
THE X-FILES  
"THE LONELY GUNMAN"  
by kevin brettauer  
DISCLAIMER: Characters created by Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz, Darin Morgan, and James Wong. Owned by Chris Carter and 10-13 Productions. 


End file.
